So what's the deal here? All of the women colluded to have an innocent man jailed for offences he didn't commit? Or there wasn't enough evidence to convict? FWIW I always believed he was innocent.

I think they may have been "persuaded" to collude.

I think you are wrong.

You may have personal insight into his character, based upon your knowledge of him as a Minister.

I have insight into how easily some people can be persuaded to collude in a whispering campaign and to write statements of utter nonsense which all give identical versions of an incident to which some were not even witnesses... and which all contained the same spelling and grammatical errors.

I am always sceptical of incidents where the potential - and convenient circumstances - for collusion are significant e.g among work colleagues.

We could say thats whats happened with Assange who is still banged up in solitary confinement,its been said that those women in Sweden were a honey trap,now they have him in jail here no need for those allegations.

I’m sure Catherine the Great would have agreed with you if that horse hadn’t fallen on her and killed her.

So what's the deal here? All of the women colluded to have an innocent man jailed for offences he didn't commit? Or there wasn't enough evidence to convict? FWIW I always believed he was innocent.

I think they may have been "persuaded" to collude.

I think you are wrong.

You may have personal insight into his character, based upon your knowledge of him as a Minister.

I have insight into how easily some people can be persuaded to collude in a whispering campaign and to write statements of utter nonsense which all give identical versions of an incident to which some were not even witnesses... and which all contained the same spelling and grammatical errors.

I am always sceptical of incidents where the potential - and convenient circumstances - for collusion are significant e.g among work colleagues.

We could say thats whats happened with Assange who is still banged up in solitary confinement,its been said that those women in Sweden were a honey trap,now they have him in jail here no need for those allegations.

I’m sure Catherine the Great would have agreed with you if that horse hadn’t fallen on her and killed her.

I don’t pretend to know the full ins and outs of the case but it did seem to me that the accusations had an element of political motivation. The charges relied on each other to try to paint Salmond as a sexual predator. On their own they seemed pretty tame as sexual offences go.

If the accusations were politically motivated did they come from some faction within the SNP itself opposed to Salmond or another political party? Though somehow I doubt this info will ever be made public.